Road Trip: Brisbane to Melbourne

Hi... First I'll quickly mention that it's my birthday! Those of you that forgot, I will no doubt see another time, probably in Hell ;) Talking of which, the obvious question now is "What the Hell are you doing sitting in front of a computer on your birthday?!" If you know me, you'll also know that it doesn't take much, any excuse will usually be sufficient! This time, however, I do actually have a pretty good excuse...

We've just completed a road trip from (near) Brisbane to Melbourne. If you look on a map it doesn't initially look like a very long way... BUT, God, those maps can be deceiving... 2500km later, just a few hours ago, we finally got to Melbourne. It's a huge distance and it is the first time I have been able to get any sort of feel for how absolutely massive Australia really is!

As you head south, things change quite a lot. The coast from Brisbane to Sydney, along the Pacific Highway, feel quite wealthy, middle class, is very very modern, and has beach after beach after beach. I'm not really a beach person, I'm more interested in city life and like to have lots of stuff going on around me, so when we finally turned off the coast I was actually a little relieved! We took a long diversion inland to Armidale, where Heather was born. Everyone you speak to will say stuff like: "why d'ya wanna go there" or "there's nothing there", but actually I quite liked Armidale. They are absolutely right, there is nothing there... except for some nice older architecture from the 1800s - a rare jewel in such a young country. Then it was back to the coast for more beaches (yawn) and then down into Victoria and through lots of rain forest.

An obligatory rant about logging: Why is everybody cutting down their rain forests... surely they understand the consequences? Driving along, we were constantly met by huge trucks carrying logs and there are numerous huge areas that have been cleared for farming and (probably McDonalds) cows! They may have re-planting schemes in place, so perhaps I'm being a little unfair, but this practice of clearing forest is something I've seen a lot of recently, in the Amazon for starters, and it really sucks! You would think a country with an ozone hole sitting over it would know better!
Disclaimer: I did use 5 or 6 full tanks of petrol during the trip and am therefore technically not exactly helping things either ;) I should have probably walked or hitched or something like that, but whatever my sins... I still don't like seeing all those trees getting cleared!!

So finally, after more camping and hundreds of kilometers of driving, we are here in Melbourne. It's been a fantastic drive and, despite my beach yawns, the coast is very beautiful. The last bit of the drive wasn't very interesting as we were running out of time and had to cut off the final section of the coast in favour of taking the motorway, but it was easy driving and we arrived in Melbourne not long ago. It's raining, as we'd been led to expect, but I don't care much about that - I'm used to it! I notice a particular London-like feel (maybe its the rain), narrower streets, some old buildings and it has a multicultural feel which is something I have become very accustomed to and prefer.

So, back to my excuse for being on a computer on my birthday... I'm killing time waiting for a lift to my new home (sofa) in Australia. Probably won't have much to say for a while, but I'll still be updating photos and other stuff down the right hand side. OK... time to get very drunk! Steve x

PS. Click here for a route map of our road trip.